


salt and burn

by duckmoles



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, Healing, Light Angst, Post-Canon, Reconciliation, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 05:49:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18515185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckmoles/pseuds/duckmoles
Summary: Ben really doesn't want to be the stereotypical "holding on to grudges" kind of ghost.(In which Ben can't quite figure out how to leave the past behind. Diego and Klaus help.)





	salt and burn

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to [natcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nat_cat) (whom i love with all my heart) for beta-ing this and for being an amazing person in general. check out her fics!!!

The worst part about being dead, Ben thinks, is everything.

Well, actually the worst part about being dead is the fact that he can’t talk to anyone except for Klaus, and half the time he doesn’t even want to talk to Klaus. But humans (and ghosts of humans, for that matter) are social creatures, and Ben had found himself slowly, begrudgingly giving small side remarks, little sarcastic comments and insights that slowly grew into full conversations. Those were the days that Klaus was sober, of course.

Ben barely talked to Klaus when he was high. Would have refused to outright if not for the fact that Klaus was still his brother, and he cared about his brother. Would always care about his brother.

-

Ben doesn’t really blame any of them for the way he died. It had been violent, and some of it was his own fault, and some of it was Diego fumbling a throw, and some of it was Klaus not paying attention, and some of it was Allison speaking a little too slow, and some of it was Luther showing off, but if anyone was to blame, it would be Reginald Hargreeves. But Reginald Hargreeves is dead. And so is Ben.

Still. Ben’s always been good at holding grudges.

-

For the longest time, Klaus was the only human being that Ben could talk to. But now–

Diego hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his – god, his leather pants, because that’s who Diego’s become in the last decade or so. His gaze is directed downwards, avoiding Klaus’s eyes.

Klaus looks taken aback. “You want me to what.” It’s not a question, the end of the sentence flat and sterile.

Diego repeats his question, this time even more unsure but somehow managing to sound even more aggressive.

“Don’t do it,” Ben says. He steps away from Diego slightly, hiding behind Klaus even though Diego can’t actually see him.

Klaus’s mouth twists. “Alright,” he says to Diego, “Benny and I need to have a little heart to heart.” When Diego doesn’t move, he makes a dismissive gesture. “Go on, shoo.” 

Ben almost wishes the kitchen had a door that he could slam instead of an open doorway, but that just might be the angry vengeful ghost stereotype coming to life inside of him.

“So,” Klaus says. “Why don’t you want to talk to Diego?”

“I don’t want to talk to any of them,” Ben says.

“You talk to me.”

“Well,” Ben starts, then doesn’t say anything for a long minute. Klaus rolls his eyes and moves past Ben to start making a pot of coffee. By habit, Ben wants to point out that coffee is a drug, but he thinks better of it at the last moment.

When the coffee machine has started running, Klaus turns around, leans backwards on the kitchen counter, and raises a single eyebrow at Ben. “Well? Don’t get cold feet on me now.”

“The thing is” –Ben licks his non-chapped, non-wet, non-anything lips– “I just really don’t want to talk to them, okay?” Ben’s allowed to be petulant. He died before he was a full adult, after all. Never mind the years of afterlife in between.

“Hey,” Klaus says, and here it’s almost gentle. “I get it. Last time you did, you actually, literally died. And you’ve been stuck with me the last two decades, it’s enough to put you off humanity entirely.”

Ben shakes his head. “It’s not-” he starts to say, but then he realizes he’s not entirely sure what it’s not. It’s not like he doesn’t miss talking to his siblings. He wants to, more than anything in the world. And he’s had so long to get over it, but there’s just – a little inkling of doubt. Of loathing.

Klaus’s eyes are soft and almost wet. “Ben,” he says. “It’s cool. We have all the time in the world now.”

Ben thinks that Five would disagree. The sentiment is nice, though.

-

The second worst part about being dead is that he can’t commit acts of violence in frustration, Ben thinks as he watches Diego beat a punching bag into submission.

He’s at the limits of his connection with Klaus, who’s in the next room teaching Vanya how to knit, but he takes the time to say, as loudly and clearly as he can, “I don’t know why I can’t let go of this. I know, intellectually, that it’s none of your faults. Not yours, especially. It’s been so long, but I – I still need time, I think.”

Diego doesn’t hear him. Klaus doesn’t hear him. It feels good to say, anyway.

-

It becomes a bad habit.

Whenever Klaus and Diego are in proximity, close enough for Ben to move between them but not close enough that Klaus can overhear anything Ben is saying, Ben starts confessing. Spilling his guts out like – well.

It hadn’t been a pretty death.

-

“The thing you miss most about being alive is touch,” Ben says.

He trails an unfelt finger across Diego’s arm. Diego’s resting a little, reading a book while half-asleep. Kafka. Ben thinks Diego should pay more attention to it.

“The warmth of another human being,” Ben continues. In the weeks leading up to his death, when they were busying themselves with a new tour and wave of crime that had sprung up, they had managed to sneak into each other’s beds – Ben and Klaus and Diego bundled up together tight and cozy after a nightmare.

“You miss the comfort.”

Ben watches the way Diego’s eyes droop, the way his head falls slightly and then jerks back up. Ben’s been tired for almost thirty years.

-

“It’s really not you,” Ben says.

He’s watching Five trying to teach Diego how to play chess. It’s going surprisingly well, even if Five is thoroughly trouncing Diego every time they reset the board. But Diego’s getting better, Ben can tell.

“It’s me.” Ben feels like he’s in a cheesy rom-com. Five knocks over Diego’s king, and Diego laughs. It’s a nice laugh. His eyes crinkle at the ends with wrinkles that Ben will never get. Ben catches himself looking a little too long and retreats back to Klaus’s side. Klaus, for all his faults, doesn’t question Ben’s latest habit of disappearing.

-

“So.”

Ben doesn’t look up from his book. “So?”

Klaus rolls his eyes. “I’m sober, so I know I’m not hallucinating you disappearing for random stretches of time. What’re you doing?”

The book is upside down. Ben hopes that Klaus doesn’t notice.

“Important ghost business,” Ben says.

Klaus lets it go. Sort of. Ben can tell that he really hasn’t, but is willing to give Ben the benefit of the doubt anyway. That’s why Ben loves him.

-

“I think I’m scared,” Ben says.

Diego whoops as he beats Luther to the finish line in Mario Kart. It’s some good, healthy competition between the two of them, a heady contrast to the bitterness and anger they held for each other before. Luther checks Diego with his shoulder gently, not even jostling Diego in the slightest. He’s gotten good at controlling his body.

“I don’t know how to interact with people anymore, not outside of Klaus. And I think I’m taking that fear and changing it into – into something I don’t want to feel.”

Onscreen, Diego’s Princess Peach falls off Rainbow Road. Luther laughs, and a few minutes later his Toad does the same. Ben surprises himself by laughing too.

-

Ben doesn’t say anything as he watches Klaus gingerly apply eyeliner to Diego.

It looks very good on Diego, and when Klaus finishes and takes out a handheld mirror for Diego to look at himself, Diego blinks, tilts his head as if he doesn’t recognize himself.

“I think you look absolutely dashing,” Klaus says cheerfully.

“You do,” Ben says aloud, before he can think about what he’s doing.

Klaus stares at Ben, eyes wide, but he recovers quickly. “And Ben thinks so too,” he relays to Diego.

Diego almost drops the mirror.

-

“Resentment,” Ben says loudly.

Klaus jerks up from where he’d been trying to bake a cake. There’s flour all over his hands, with some having ended up on his nose. “What?”

Diego jerks up because Klaus has. He makes a similar noise of confusion.

“I’ve been dead for who knows how long,” Ben says. He knows. He has it down to the second. He suspects Diego and Klaus do as well. “And I’ve…none of us have had a chance to get over it properly, leastof all me. So.” Ben takes a deep breath of air he doesn’t actually need. “That’s what I’d like to say. It’s not Diego’s fault. It’s not any of your faults.”

Klaus drops the dough he had been trying to knead.

Ben wishes he had something to do with his hands, but that hope was dashed a long time ago. “Can you tell Diego that?”

-

“You can’t just drop a bombshell like that, disappear, and expect me to deliver it,” Klaus says, sensibly. He’s washed his hands, but there’s still a streak of flour dusting his cheek.

“Why not?”

“Because,” Klaus says, “it’s your issues. I can’t be the one to solve it for you. Well, I can facilitate but – you know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” Ben replies. He does.

Klaus throws his hands up in the air. “This was so much easier when I was high.” He flops down onto the sofa, splayed out, legs thrown over the high backing and head tilted back to the floor. “Talk to him, Ben.”

“I can’t,” Ben says. “That’s the whole problem.”

-

Diego pulls Klaus aside one day. “Is Ben here?”

Klaus’s eyes dart to the corner of the room, where Ben is brooding. Ben shakes his head.

“Nope,” Klaus says.

Diego sighs. “Well, can you tell me when he is? I need to talk to him.”

“Uh,” Klaus says. “Sure.” He’s very carefully not looking at Ben now.

“Tell him that you can just tell me what he has to say,” Ben says. Klaus does.

When Diego speaks, it’s in a voice as soft as his knives are sharp. “I don’t and can’t know the full extent of what Ben is feeling,” he says. “And it’s perfectly fine if he never wants to talk to any of us ever. But I –”

This is not the Diego Ben remembers. The false bravado is gone, replaced with a genuine sincerity. Ben remembers – Mario Kart. A smear of eyeshadow. Laughter ringing out in the echoing halls of the house. Filling the silence where it had always been present before. Diego shuffles his feet slightly. Maybe they’re all healing. Even Ben.

“I love him,” Diego finishes. “And if he ever wants to talk, well. I’m here.”

Ben clenches his fists. He can feel the monsters in him writhing.

“Hey,” he says to Klaus. “Manifest me. I want to talk.”

They talk.

-

Ben turns out to be incredible at Mario Kart. He beats Diego almost every time.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr at [duckmoles](https://duckmoles.tumblr.com) and on discord!


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